Computer systems are becoming increasingly pervasive in our society, including everything from small handheld electronic devices, such as personal digital data assistants and cellular phones, to application-specific electronic components, such as set-top boxes and other consumer electronics, to medium-sized mobile and desktop systems to large workstations and servers. Long battery life has always been a goal of mobile systems and long battery life has become even more important with the deployment of wireless technology that allows mobile systems to remain completely un-tethered.
To provide more powerful computer systems for consumers, designers strive to continually increase the operating speed of the processor. A by-product of increasing processor speed is an increase in the amount of power consumed by the processor. The increased system power consumption result in need for bigger thermal/cooling system, bigger power delivery system and reducing battery life.
One approach to power management is by setting user's preference using the operating system and BIOS (basic input/output system). The BIOS registers setting controls a length of time the system must be active after user inactivity. For example, power to the display can be managed by setting a power off option in a power management properties menu to a certain fixed expiration value. The expiration value may be set to any value provided in a pop-up window ranging from 1 minute to “never”. The expiration value is static and remains the same until another value is selected. FIG. 1 illustrates a prior art example of a pop-up window used to specify power management preferences. As illustrated in FIG. 1, power can be managed by setting user's preference to turn off monitor, hard disks and to put the system in standby mode.